The adaptation of Chinese characters into the Japanese language

One of the challenges I’ve found in having studied Japanese for many years before endeavoring to learn Chinese, is that I often see a Chinese character that is the same character in Japanese (and usually has the same or similar meaning but different pronounciation) and pronounce it as it is pronounced in Japanese. My mind just immediately pulls from my inner Japanese dictionary as my inner Chinese dictionary has not yet been completely written or filled. I had actually thought that studying Japanese first would give me a leg up on my Chinese studies.

The confusion usually happens when I am reading out loud in Chinese, in front of my teacher, who is listening and hanging on my every word for proper tone (unlike Japanese, Chinese has 4 unique tones, to add to the confusion), pronounciation and flow.

I can literally hear my brain click and the hamster wheel in my head turning while confusion sets in.  The character that frequently trips me up is the character for book 本.  In Japanese, it is “hon” (pronounced like hone).  In Mandarin Chinese,  本  is the measure word for the character for book (书) and is “ben” (pronounced like bun). For example, if you want to write "three books" in Mandarin Chinese, it is written as 三本书 (3+measure word+book). 

Whenever I see the Chinese character 本, my brain processes the character in Japanese and I think and say hon.  I immediately correct myself but it is often too late. My Chinese teacher, mildly disgusted, says NO. Sharply and in English.  Although I had studied East Asian Studies for a year at the graduate level at Harvard and learned quite a bit about Buddhism, ancient Japanese literature and art and the Japanese language itself, I do not remember ever learning exactly how the Chinese characters made their way into the Japanese language. This lack of knowledge almost always leads to a blog entry!

According to my research, Chinese books were first brought to Japan between the 3rd and 5th centuries A.D.  During the Tang dynasty, China was considered to be the single most important cultural power in Eastern Asia. Chinese writing then began migrating into Japan. The adaptation of Chinese characters during the 6^th to 9^th centuries A.D. is considered to be the most important event in the development of the Japanese language.

The Japanese borrowed the Chinese language as one of education and culture. Soon, Classical Chinese was adopted as the official written language of Japan. Shortly after this time, modified Chinese characters were being used to write the Japanese language. All early Japanese writings are essentially written in classical Chinese. To be able to write in medieval Japan basically meant to be able to read and write Chinese. This language was called kango by the Japanese.

By the 12^th century, the two Japanese syllabic writing systems, hiragana and katakana, were created out of kanji (the Japanese word for Chinese characters). These two writing systems are easier to learn (from my experience) than kanji and give Japanese it's unique appearance (as it is written from a mixture of kanji, hiragana and katakana).


It is also important to point out that the Chinese language did influence other Asian languages, such as Korea and Vietnam.


I will continue my Mandarin Chinese studies for as long as possible (my aim is to be fluent within 5 years). The saving grace for me is that there are also some words (like the number 3 and the word for love) that not only share the same character in Japanese and Chinese but are also pronounced the same! Amen to that.